William Empson, who died in 1984, was the author of – among many other books – Seven Types of Ambiguity, The Structure of Complex Words and Milton’s God.
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Vol. 2 No. 1 · 24 January 1980
pages 1-3 | 2995 words
Advanced Thought
William Empson
- Genesis of Secrecy by Frank Kermode
Harvard, 169 pp, £5.50, June 1979, ISBN 0 674 34525 8
Frank Kermode’s new book contains a great deal of graceful and dignified prose, especially in the last chapter, and many of the examples are of great interest. It seems to argue that no history or biography can be believed, but must be regarded as a kind of novel. Any narrative is necessarily incomplete, and the details left out may for some readers be the important ones – what is taken for granted may become the crucial question. Such is the justification for the title. The chief theme of the book, or source for its examples, is the Gospel of St Mark, and it attends to many recent works on this subject, mostly in French or German. A tone of yearning sorrow is often present, but Kermode’s theory must be applied to his own work: this tone should be part of his novelistic technique.
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Letters
Vol. 2 No. 2 · 7 February 1980
From Frank Kermode
SIR: One thing about Sir William’s very peculiar piece (LRB, Vol. 2, No 1): unless he has access to Greville’s notes, he cannot know that Sidney said ‘need’, for Greville in his book says ‘necessity’; he, not I, preferred the long fussy word.
Frank Kermode
King’s College, Cambridge
William Empson writes: I am sure Kermode is right. If I had checked, I would have ascribed the mistake to Greville. Everyone who recalls the legend says ‘thy need’, and that is what Sidney would have said.
